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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (34575)	7/18/2002 4:12:52 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

I hope they do drop the whole new Department, but I don't think we can be that lucky. From "WSJ.com" Homeland-Security Holdup Do we need a new department? Not right now. Thursday, July 18, 2002 12:01 a.m. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But the more we look at the hash Washington is making of President Bush's proposal for a new Department of Homeland Security, the more we think he'd be wiser to call the whole thing off. The House has already blocked part of the reorganization, and Senate Democrat Robert Byrd seems prepared to filibuster if Mr. Bush's proposal isn't amended out of recognition. This being Congress, Members couch their objections in grandiloquent rhetoric about "safeguarding Congressional responsibilities." The truth is more mundane. It's about hanging onto power. Consider the President's request that the department have transfer authority over even just 5% of its budget--to be able to act quickly to address terror threats as they emerge. Both the leading Republican and Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee are outraged. The proposal is "overly broad and unprecedented," proclaims Chairman C.W. Bill Young. It would give the new department "a totally free hand," cries Democrat David Obey. Forgive us for thinking that Osama bin Laden is a bigger threat than letting the commander-in-chief decide how to spend a fraction of his anti-terrorism budget. The President also wants hiring and firing authority over the 170,000 workers in the new department. But Democrats are more worried about how their union backers will respond to a non-unionized government agency than about giving the President a flexible work force. It's not just Congress that's messing up the works. A Journal story yesterday reported on the Cabinet officials and agency heads fretting that their power may be slipping away along with their anti-terror turf. Officials at the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol and Firearms are desperately worried about being left behind at Treasury. It's a different story at the Coast Guard, where members are lobbying to stay out of Homeland Security. The White House spent eight months refining its plan for a Homeland Security Department. The resulting proposal seemed plausible and worth a try, but in retrospect this wasn't the best use of the Administration's scarce political capital. The middle of a crisis, and only weeks before an election, isn't the optimal time to debate and pass the biggest transformation of government in 50 years. The Administration has plenty else to focus on before rearranging the bureaucracy. At the top of the list is acquainting the FBI with e-mail and making sure that government agencies can communicate with each other electronically. The cop who stops a driver for a traffic infraction ought to be able to plug that name into a computer and know instantly whether the FBI or INS is looking for him. Yesterday's House report on intelligence failures leading up to September 11 suggests a few other more urgent priorities. The special House subcommittee calls for better eavesdropping technology for the National Security Agency, more spies for the CIA including the recruitment of unsavory characters, and more translators and analysts so that the intelligence agencies can gain timely access to the information they collect. It also wants every government agency with an anti-terrorism mission to adopt the same definition of terrorism. It still makes sense to bring together--under one roof and under the authority of a single, Cabinet-level official--all of the government agencies dedicated to homeland security. But these are decisions best made with deliberation, and not in the mad rush of the final 30 working days of a Congressional session. The President's good proposal deserves to be tucked away in a bottom drawer for a while, and brought back out when we're farther along the road to winning the war on terrorism. opinionjournal.com

To: D. Long who wrote (34575)	7/22/2002 6:16:01 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 281500

In all fairness, the Taliban wouldn't need to "defeat" the regional governors. They could capture the provinces in much the same way they did the first time round: BUY the regional governors. We are talking about Afghanistan, World Capital of Turncoats here... I think more then just the money the reason a lot of the warlords and regional leaders lined up behind the Taliban was because their victory was seen to have been inevitable after awhile and everyone wanted to get behind a winner. I think unless the US completely walks away from the situation, the Taliban would have a problem buying the regional governors out. The US is seen as being the big power that you don't want to cross more then the Taliban. As long as we don't push our luck by trying to control the country too much (and I see no sign that we are doing that) we probably won't piss off the governors and warlords enough to have them turn against us unless they see us as week. If it comes to a bidding war for support, we have more to bid with the the Taliban does. Of course being richer and stronger doesn't mean we can't be stupid, and if you are stupid enough all sorts of bad things can happen so I can't say it is completely impossible that the Taliban or some successor to the Taliban could take over in Afghanistan but the possibility seems very remote. It seems more likely to me that a fundamentalist government would take over in some place like Saudi Arabia (of course that would be a lot worse then it happening in Afghanistan). Tim